On installing nvidia drivers on 12.10 I get "Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.5.0-19-generic (x86_64)"

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New Ubuntu user - just recently made the mistake of trying a different nvidia driver. I'd managed to get the last (nvidia-current) one working through software sources a few weeks ago. The other day I tried to cross over to nvidia-experimental-310 and this produced a system error. Swapping back and forth between proprietary drivers now always causes an error and I can't get any of them to work.
Installing through the terminal I get this error message every time:
Building initial module for 3.5.0-19-generic
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.5.0-19-generic (x86_64)
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